


Anaesthetist

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotionally Repressed, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 18:12:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19729051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Linus thinks about choices.





	Anaesthetist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kokopellifacetattoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokopellifacetattoo/gifts).



> I spent way too long trying to decide what name Micro would think of himself as. According to the Wiki he WAS born David Linus Lieberman, but I know in the comics he calls himself Linus for a while, and for the most part he's either 'Microman' or Lieberman to Frank. In the end, I settled on Linus because it just seemed more... idk, in character than him thinking of himself by a nickname.
> 
> This was requested on Tumblr! If you have a request, drop me a line there. I'm Ifridiot.

We make a lot of choices without really realizing we’re choosing anything at all. A lot of those choices, if put to us as actual choices in a calm environment with time to think rationally, we would have made differently. Life’s not slow or rational enough for anyone to weigh anything important as carefully as the choices deserve.

It feels like that’s been Linus’s whole life. 

Certainly, standing over the sink and watching another man’s blood run off his skin; scrubbing it from under his nails, trying to figure out how they’d managed to run out of rubber gloves, basic fucking necessities, is not a place Linus would have seen himself a year ago. The fact that the blood is his best friend’s and this all feels so normal that his biggest concern is making sure to resupply the medkit properly speaks of a length of questionable choices. Linus can’t really pinpoint the pivot that surely must have happened, exactly where the slippage started, how he’d ended up with Frank Castle as a best friend and surgical gloves on his short list of things to grab at the store.

Only that the pivotal point must have been there. 

Clearly there are choices he could make differently. Frank is sprawled out on his cot, the fan blowing on him because he was covered in newly washed out wounds and letting him get immediately sweaty again seemed like a step in the wrong direction. Linus had made several choices already this morning and it’s barely five AM. 

Chosen to stop what he was doing and help Frank. Chosen to grab the suture kit and stitch Frank up himself. Chosen to ration out painkillers with the antibiotics, even though they’re running low and the good ones are a bitch to get hold of. He chose to turn the lights immediately down low so Frank could rest, he chose to walk away when Frank was giving him that burning look.

None of this has felt like a choice. He knows he's made choices, he knows he has _options_ , but the thing is that, as bizarre and often upsetting as his life often is these days, the only 'choice' at any given time is to do what he's asked, what he has been doing, what feels _right_ at the time, or to walk away and hope that doesn't put him on Frank's list.

The really fucked up part is, it's not fear of being on Frank's eternal list of People He Doesn't Like that keeps him doing this shit. Hell, he's not even afraid of ending up on the shorter, more succinct kill list.

The fucked up thing is, Linus isn't afraid of Frank. Fear is there, fear is _always_ there, but he's not scared _of_ Frank, and being scared _of_ the man probably wouldn't keep him around this way. He wouldn't look forward to seeing Frank, wouldn't worry about him, wouldn't --

Well, a lot of this would be different, probably easier, if he were afraid of Frank, but he's not.

He's an idiot, and he's not afraid of Frank, he's afraid _for_ him.

Because, on the list of fucked up things about all of this, Linus has spent so much time watching Frank, and he knows him now. Knows him better than just about anyone else alive in the world can know him, considering the way Frank goes out of his way to act like a fuckhead and push every single other person away the second it becomes obvious they're interested in getting close. 

Linus has spent so much time watching Frank, seeing the way he processes, the way he pushes himself; witnessed him in the grips of obsession, seen him in a rare moment of vulnerability; he's slicked his hands in Frank's blood, flesh to flesh as he works to get him patched together enough to make it to someone who can ensure he doesn't die. 

And what Linus has become afraid of is not Frank himself, but the inevitability of Frank getting so hurt out there that no one can help him at all. 

See, the thing is, Linus is stupid enough to have conflated a few desperate moments, Frank breaking down his own walls enough to drag Linus in closer, kiss him, touch him -- Linus is stupid enough to have conflated a couple orgasms with mutual affection. He's stupid enough to love someone who's never going to love anything or anyone as much as he loves the job he's taken on himself. 

Frank seems to be asleep when Linus checks on him. That's fine, that's probably for the best. Linus let Frank drag him in and start kissing once before, between sewing closed a few nasty wounds and either one of them getting a shower. The desperate eagerness of a man as touch-starved as Frank has a lot going for it, but not enough that Linus is eager to repeat the fundamentally unpleasant experience of scrubbing Frank's blood out of places Frank's blood should never be.

In a lot of ways, Frank is a very selfish man. He's closed off and violent and obsessively masculine in a way that feels almost like a caricature. He's frequently ungrateful, often moody, usually demanding. He's an idiot in a hundred ways that should really turn Linus off to the whole idea of sticking by him, and he's mean. Mean in a way that ends up hurting more because Linus doesn't even think he does half the little cruel things he does on purpose.

No one who got a good look at their relationship, who saw the effort Linus put in and the way Frank responded, would fault him for throwing in the towel here. Getting out while the getting is good. He's lost enough already, standing with Frank, hitching himself to that particular wagon.

But if Frank's an idiot, Linus is another. A bigger, more innocuous sort: he's an idiot in love, and he thinks he might live longer, safer, healthier if he did run from this, but he can't. Not because he wants Frank's approval, not because he has some sense of responsibility and duty to this cause, not because Frank is, selfish idiot or not, exceptionally attractive in a 'ruthlessly fit and liable to shoot you' sort of way.

He can't leave because whoever Frank turns to next whoever tries to help him, won't be as good as Linus. They couldn't possibly put up with all Frank's bullshit and elect to stick around, and Linus can't imagine anyone else willing to put in the hours to keep on top of technological innovations, develop code, hacks, process data for Frank, cook for him, patch him up, care for him -- Linus can't trust anyone else to fill his shoes, and he's not stupid enough to think that if he walked out, Frank would leave those shoes empty. 

There's other choices, but none of them are good. It hurts Linus's heart to think of it so bleakly, but perspective is good. Knowing, admitting, that he's not special to Frank, he's just loyal and hardworking enough to be useful, is good. It doesn't _feel_ good, but it _is_ good, because even a man in love needs to be realistic about his prospects.

Linus doesn't like getting maudlin. He struggles with depression the way he struggles with his weight; endlessly and to no real avail. Alcohol is about as helpful for depression as cake is to weight gain, which is to say it feels like a treat but is really just fanning the flames of that particular problem. 

He doesn't drink a lot, but nights like this, he needs something. Frank's asleep and Linus is... he's tired and unhappy and whiskey, at the very least, warms him up. 

Well on his way through his second glass, Frank's fingers graze his shoulders. Linus jumps; he can't help it. Frank is six-foot-three and a little heavier even than Linus, but he can move so quick and quiet and Linus has gotten so used to him, it's easy for him to sneak up on Linus. 

"Come lay down," Frank says, and it's an order and an invitation, hopeful and demanding but with no real expectation because Frank is selfish in a lot of ways but there's something in him that's scared too, somehow, scared around Linus like Frank thinks he'll hurt him, given a chance. Frank in these moments, touching when it's not necessary and offering things that aren't required, _is_ giving Linus a chance to hurt him.

This is Frank baring his throat. 

Maybe the proper thing would be to look away. Not acknowledge the offer, not to seize it and not to twist it into something cruel. One of them should be keeping the distance here, that's probably important; one of them not giving in to the urge to be a complete moron about this --

"Alright," Linus says, and the smile he gets is barely anything, would look like nothing at all to someone who hasn't spent a frankly embarrassing amount of time watching Frank. It's barely anything around the mouth, just the slightest upward curve; the trick is to watch his eyes. How they soften, how something like relief rockets around behind that grey-blue gaze. 

Frank heads back to the bed, such that it is -- a couple discount mattresses on a rickety thrift store frame. Linus takes the last of his whiskey at a swallow and leaves the ice to melt in the glass, and he lets Frank pull him down. He lets the touch of bruised knuckles running over the curve of his cheek numb the anxiety, the warmth of Frank’s lips against his own dull the stress. 

In a lot of ways, Frank chooses to be cruel, selfish, callous. Linus chooses to be stupid, chooses to pretend to be blind. 

This feels different, outside of that. This is an anaesthetic for an open wound, a few moments of healing sweetness before they go back to making choices that never feel like choices. 

So in that moment, Frank open and willing, Linus chooses, consciously, to hold on. 


End file.
